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Thursday, November 15, 2007

Having made himself something of target by declaring war on his own fans, Prince is now finding that the internet can bit back. Indeed, b3ta launched a Prince image challenge in celebration of his stupidity.

For their efforts, they got a DCMA take-down notice, despite - erm - not being in the US. They've complied with the purple-pissy prissy one's wishes:

Under threat of legal action from Princes legal team of "potential closure of your web site" - We have removed the Prince image challenge and B3ta apologises unreservedly to AEG / NPG and Prince for any offence caused. We also ask our members to avoid photoshoping Prince and posting them on our boards.

Prince's giffinder general, John Gaicobbi of Web Sheriff did his best to try and not make his client sound like a humourless, heavy-handed, technophobic cry-baby:

"I don't think the people who posted them would like to be on receiving end of that kind of treatment.

"There's poking fun and there's poking fun and people are clearly taking it too far and crossing over the boundaries of what is acceptable."

Perhaps these people wouldn't want to be on the end of caricatures depicting them in an unpleasant way, but then since they haven't been sending legal letters demanding - god help us all - that websites remove pictures of people with Prince tattoos - it's unlikely they'd find themselves in such an unpleasant position in the first place.

We've had a quick Google and apparently the Prince-mandated shades of acceptable fun-poking have yet to be made public. Perhaps Prince could let us know exactly what degree of "poking fun" is acceptable to him: can we, for example, draw a small cartoon of him screeching "listen, Charles Windsor, either you take the word 'Prince' off your business cards, or I'll send my WebSherriff round"? Would a photoshopped image of him trying to whitewash a computer monitor be okay? How about if we morphed his head onto an etching of King Cantue? It would be handy to know.